Last week, we heard from my friend NiCole, who spoke about re-positioning, re-ceiving, and re-defining in this next phase of life with young adult children. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to that episode, please check it out.

I’m going to follow NiCole’s theme with some thoughts I had this summer when our second oldest left for college. Team, we now have two kids living at college and two high schoolers at home. I have been baffled by how incredibly different almost every single aspect of our life feels with half as many kids in the house. It is blowing my mind. Less groceries, less mess, less dishes, less laundry—it is so strange.

In some of those quiet moments in August I was thinking about recovery. Now, we talk about recovery a lot here at Confessions, it’s in the title for Pete’s sake. But today, I want to talk about re-covering. I absolutely love how these Google definitions of ‘recovering’ illustrate exactly what I’m feeling:

1. a return to a normal state of health, mind, or strength.
2. to find or regain possession of something stolen or lost.

Team, isn’t this exactly how parenting feels? I have not felt in a normal state of health, mind, or strength for the past 21 years. And now, with half the amount of kids on my dance card, I feel called to find and regain possession of the parts of me that I’ve lost. 

Do you have something in your life that you used to love to do but you don’t do it any more? Are there things that have inadvertently fallen to the wayside that you might now have the time to invite back into your life?

Listen, children three and four still have us clocking some serious miles in our cars. Sometimes, I feel like I spend more time at the gas station than I do in the shower. But I’m slowly recovering parts of myself that are helping to make me feel like me again. I returned to dancing this summer. I’m working out my lower back pain in yoga several mornings a week. I’m making time for some food prep that I never seemed to be able to work into the schedule. These things are small but they’ve been having a huge impact on my life.

As I mentioned in the first episode of Season Nine: This year is going to be all about not creating stress where stress doesn’t need to exist. And one way I can do that is by recovering those old, forgotten roads that, when found, have the power to return me to a normal state of health, mind, and strength.

I’m going to leave you today with a quote from my buddy Greg McKeown, who I don’t know personally, but I adore:

“If you don’t prioritize your life, someone else will.” 

Have a lovely week everyone and thanks for listening!